Monday, September 13, 2010

Though I am on vacation I decided to drop a note on my blog since its my 25th birthday.

I am older, stronger and more connected now and I am ready to face life from a different angle. So I decided to officially start bearing my own name which is Mr Churchill Nanje. Well Mambe is my Dad's name so I wont go along with that to my own family.

- I continued expanding my business AfroVisioN Group into other African countries and getting more clients which are between 100 and 150 clients world wide now

- I worked with my partners to launch Camerborn hosted on http://www.camerborn.com the Cameroonian born social media platform

- My company and I worked with Boss Uche Chuta to launch this Global Mobile and Web payment and money transfer platform Vaultnoir hosted on http://www.vaultnoir.com, Africans can now have their own paypal accounts.

- Alot of things happened but I cant detail them all in this post...but my partnership in Nigeria kept expanding with naijaborn.com, aimtechng.com, vaultnoir.com, pcklinicng.com, aadilonline.com all being related in one way or another to my Nigeria expansion strategy.

- also my 24th year on earth was filled with expansion, expansion, expansion(my company now has 7 fulltime staff and 5fulltime developers: http://twitter.com/mambenanje/afrovision-staff)...along side alot of articles on sites like cp-africa.com, webtrendsng.com, techmasai.com, edouardtamba.com and many many others who thought I was worth it

show ya sef !

Looking forward to my 25th year on earth and also spending some days off the computer while gaining momentum to continue the ride which I think will be faster and bumpy... watch out for www.njorku.com

Thursday, August 19, 2010

If you are travelling this August 2010 via Brussels Airlines, pick up B.Spirit(July 2010 edition) and turn to page 53 to read up on me ;).

Now that I have made the announcement let me start from the beginning:

A few months ago, while I was busy trying to hack some codes I got a mail from a journalist in UK asking if I was available for an interviewing. He writes for B.Spirit ( http://www.ink-live.com/emagazines/b.spirit ) an inflight magazine for Brussels airlines and he was working on an article talking about broadband internet and its effects on Africa.

Well first I wanted to be like the all busy guy that doesnt have time for interviews and the public eye (my usual self) but then again I said ooh well this is exposure for me so let me give it a try.

We had a couple of conversations and finally he told me he was done with the article. Before I knew it Linda Raftree ( http://lindaraftree.wordpress.com/) got to me on twitter with an @reply saying she saw a profile of me as she read one of the magazines in the plane while traveling back to USA from Africa (Nairobi, Kenya). Immediately I had to recall the interview I had with the journalist.

Basically the article talks of myself, AfroVisioN Group ( www.afrovisiongroup.com ) , how it all started and how its growing now with the internet access getting better.

He told me about 600,000 people read that magazine on board the Brussels airlines every month so I am glad to get such exposure at this time of my business journey.

So if you are travelling via Brussels airlines, pick up the B.spirit magazine this August 2010 and check my swag and show me some love here with some comments...

if Android OS becomes social...facebook is going to find it hard to catch up... if I was working for Google...Android will become social

Eric Schmidt(Google CEO) has been talking recently about their Google Me rumors and he says they are not creating something to replace facebook. He said: The problem facebook is solving has been solved, we are solving something else.

I have always known Google as as company that sees a market, and sees a giant in the market...accept the giant and even promotes the giant in the market and build their own solutions that work on top of that giant system and make their own share of the money(this is what they did with MS Office and Windows. they produced Google Docs).

I also know them infamously as a company that knows how to say "if I cant beat you in the air, I will take you to water and land and my overall points from water and land will out weigh the points you get against me in the air" this is a war strategy where you expand the battle field(they did this to the iPhone and released the Droid and they are trying to get non smartphone users interested in smartphones by convincing the non smartphone phone manufacturers to get more smartphones to their clients, Droid, DroiX, Incredible, EVO 4G ).

Talking about Droid and Android...now imagine if the phone turns to become a social gadget that has a login screen when you turn it on (I guess its already using gmail accounts), and as you login you can see feeds of your Android friends network. Once you do some actions and set up your privacy and friend groups for say Co-workers, school mates, family, etc. these groups will see feeds of things you do on your phone in realtime like, snap a picture and save...and your friends will auto see a feed and see the picture and they can comment or share it (Android device to Android Device over the internet)...taking what happens on facebook right inside your phone. Other actions may include when you shoot a video, download an application, buy an application, use a website and other preying/privacy intruding things that facebook does to us now...

well thats the concept I think they might use to expand the market since facebook is king of web social networking, they will push hard and expand the field into social networking on the handset where in facebook will not be able to catch up...take facebook from its comfort zone(web) into a new zone where Google and its Android OS determine the rules and beat them like a pinata lol ;)

If you doubt my theory please see how they are taking Microsoft from Desktop Office tools into cloud office tools...Microsoft is dancing to Google's tune and following the steps of Google while they were leader in office tools, now Google determines the future of office productivity. Thats the kind if turn I can bet on. Also they are the ones deciding the future of smartphones now not Apple, because for the past 6months Apple iOS has only been playing catch up and they are not yet fully recovered lol

See the response and conversation I had on facebook with friends:

Saheed Taiye Adepoju: how should android go social?

Mambe Churchill Nanje: well the OS needs to have a friends app...that keeps your friends on their phones posted about some things you do on your phone...like I snap a new picture, the people I have added to my friends list will be notified of the picture and they can comment right from their phone...then expand it to games, apps, as I do this on an app just like facebook...my friends see a feed of some of my public actions...then they can comment or share it to their own friends...login to facebook is synonymous to login to your android phone

Saheed Taiye Adepoju: they got all that via android apps. The OS is very open and can customise it to be social. You got friendStream on the HTC UI sense which allows one to automatically update twitter and facebook and flickr. I can easily share links from within my android phone, i can pretty much do "social" thing due to the tons of apps on Android market. At the moment, logging into Gmail is same as logging onto ya android phone. If you havent got a gmail acct, the phone is pretty much useless to ya.

Mambe Churchill Nanje: cool...but I dont mean twitter, facebook...I mean ANDROID to ANDROID.... keeping facebook and twitter out of the whole scenario...friend to friend...like phone calls but now friend activities communicated to friends and they can comment and get notifications on their phones...no email, no facebook just phone and internet access

Saheed Taiye Adepoju: well i guess keeping with the android initiative of being open, someone might just implement android messaging, that wont be too hard.

Mambe Churchill Nanje: well its more than messaging...the files you save in your phone memory and apps you install, get shared with a couple of people...facebook pretty much is an os...where you have a profile, you login, you see what others are doing on their own space...so this is what I mean...what you save on your phone can be commented on by others...think pictures, videos, text, etc

Saheed Taiye Adepoju: Ok.

Tabi Tabe Ebot: ‎@mambe Google can come up with something like but the probe is will the mass be able to get phones such the nexus with it price tag? i mean here in africa not everyone can afford one.

Laurantine Endah Tatah: ok sa!

Mambe Churchill Nanje: ‎@Tabi its the Android OS that will get this feature...and when naijaborn phones, camerborn phones, encipher tablets get the updated ones...these features come into the device...and you automatically part of the social network and you start building your friends

Tabi Tabe Ebot: ‎@mambe Google can come up with something like but the probe is will the mass be able to get phones such the nexus with it price tag? i mean here in africa not everyone can afford one.

Tabi Tabe Ebot: ‎@mambe well for thats very possible to engineer, i mean you see what i'm talk Google can do it, and someone of your quality can dev that since Android is open, its very possible, i see it even possible to push data at real time, since its pure android to android. Great idea man.

Mambe Churchill Nanje: if I develop it, then I have to push it right inside the next Google Android public release...but its good as Google is asking developers to submit their products

Tabi Tabe Ebot: that will be good. then i should be eyeing an android handset then.

Mambe Churchill Nanje: ooh well...I dont have the right investment to do this...but I can push it so Google does it...I am even thinking thats Google Me

Tabi Tabe Ebot: if thats Google me then there is alot of problem for the others social media company, anywhere lets hold our hands closed and wait on GoogleMe then.

I was there along side Nara Njie Litumbe (software developer at AfroVisioN Group), check out his blog post about his participation http://njielitumbe.livejournal.com/1032.html which was to represent AfroVisioN Group and tell the Cameroonian tech community about Model View Controller( MVC ) and its benefits.

I had a presentation about Camerborn.com - Show ya sef...and its future innovations into the Cameroonian tech space.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Show Ya Sef Networks Africa (SYSAfrica) www.sysafrica.com is one of those things that made me happy in the year 2009.

I met Francis Oghuma March 2009 and we decided to embark on a new project and that project turned into Show Ya Sef, and we want it to be a network of solutions across Africa and other parts of the world so we called it Show Ya Sef Networks. It starts in Africa which makes it Show Ya Sef Networks Africa... hence SYSAfrica.

Ok thats alot of history lets define it:

SYSAfrica is an African social media platforms and solutions provider. It seeks to provide cultural and local social media community portals and solutions to every African country and beyond. Its known to be the parent company behind www.naijaborn.com (the nigerian custom built social media platform) and www.camerborn.com (the platform of proud Cameroonians that strives to connect them and help them do a lot together in many aspects of life).

ok what the above means is that we are creating social networks in every African country on which we will be developing specialized web, mobile, enterprise solutions to be used by Africans to enhance their possibilities and make them richer, happier and better humans. Thats where SYSAfrica is heading to, so you might soon get a SYSAfrica solution in your country and if you need us in your country or want to work with us, we are also open as long as we all heading towards the same goals.

here are some images to accompany my post

SYS Africa has its development team in Buea (I am the lead developer so its natural). so this is the syslabs logo ;)

Monday, June 21, 2010

Recently my love for Android OS has gone over the bar mainly due to the vast penetration of mobile technology in Africa and the FOSS nature of Android which permits any entrepreneur(even those in the developing world) to start their own smartphone manufacturing company like Nokia, HTC, Apple etc.

So I am getting more and more into Android and smartphone applications development waiting for the next 6years to have a giant industry with my smart apps, and also get started with some outsourcing deals to get a hang of mobile apps development space while it matures in Africa.

As a regular writer for Packtpub.com, I decided to share some of my findings by writing an article that introduces web developers with knowledge in jquery to develop iPhone, Android apps for their existing web applications using jQTouch.

jQTouch is a jquery plugin that can be used by any web application developer with small experience in jquery to build applications for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

follow the link below to read my article about jQTouch on packtpub.com

I will push AfroVisioN Group to offer 1000 websites free to all Cameroonians(personal, business or enterprise owners) for the next five years. Any business that needs a website/web+enterprise applications should not go any further, come and get your free custom built solutions with us...visit www.afrovisiongroup.com go to our contact page send us a mail with information "Churchill+Mambe-AfroVisioN+Group-free-website:April+Fools+Joke" and state your company name, your address, email and phone number and our Customer Service team will get back to you. Note that in exactly two weeks after you contact us, you will get a website as powerful as www.pcklinicng.comwww.imagine-finances.com and the others we have in our portfolio on www.afrovisiongroup.com/projects.php

Monday, February 15, 2010

My most recent article for packtpub.com is titled "Building a Simple Address Book Application with jQuery and PHP"

In the tutorial styled article, I take the audience through the simple steps towards building a powerful Rich Internet Application like Gmail, Gmaps, Google apps using javascript, JSON communication and PHP. Coming from a Rich Internet background (Flash Certified Developer in 2005), I can bet you that the reason why most Google apps make us feel comfortable and can compete with Microsoft tools or desktop its because of one reason, Javascript and AJAX. And this article will give you some introductions on how to build such applications though to some greater extend you would have to employ things like GWT (Google Web Toolkit)....

check out the article on this link and tell me what you think about it:

we will explore the world of jQuery and PHP in achieving an AJAX style simple address book application using the JSON protocol. The basic application will help the user save, view and delete his or her contacts(name and phone). Its a basic application to demonstrate some key jQuery features like DOM transversing, jQquery event binding and AJAX calls with the $.ajax function....